Nice yet fast daily driver ~$8000

I am looking for a daily driver I can mod to be fast yet reliable around $8000, any recommendations? Please include what you'd do to it, and preferably prices. Your experience would really help me out!

Mazda speed 3 gen 1. Seriously some of the fastest production cars for the price point, tons of options for mods, built in dataport. Only comes in manual, comfy as fuck, bulletproof, parts are cheap, easy to work on. Like I can't stress enough how fast these cars are and how easy it is to make them faster. Plus actual backseat and room for stuff/friends, perfect for a daily.

Yea I know fwd is gay but for a daily its perfect.

I have a fun rwd car, but my ms3 is the greatest daily. Aside from a miata/s2k in a canyon, or a shit box with a ls swap, you'll be faster than all the other ricer boy racers out there.

>daily driver
Easy.
>I can mod
No problem.
>fast yet reliable
This is going to be hard.

The instant you start modding you enter into a never ending upkeep the more mods you throw on. And the more mods you adds the less reliability it becomes as a daily driver. Unless you're talking about really really simple mods.

>Mazda speed 3 gen 1
this. my neighbor owns a 2013 ms3 turbo and it walks on wrx boyracers on the highway easy.

its also his daily and from what i've driven its real /comfy/

what if he's talking about only adding a few tasteful mods?

Holy fuck my dude, this sounds pretty good, any good idea of what the 0-60 is like? The only source I found was saying 14 seconds and that sounds retarded for a car that comes out the door turbo...

Im looking for very minimum mods, enough to make it atleast slightly competative, im by no means looking to rice anything, in college I have no budget for bullshit

0-60 in around 6 seconds, 14 is probably the quarter mile.

Also, what mods would you put on one of these to keep reliability in tact, but up the power a bit?

depends. if you're gonna be one of those worthless stopligh racing faggots or you actually want to use those cars good cornering performance.

Oil catch can, cooling, ecu tune, baffled oil pan should keep the engine in great shape after 100 laps round a track.

Original ms3 fag here

Get an Sri, cat, downpipe from Cobb. Those are all easier install than doing an oil change and make a big difference. Get a bpv/dv, a little harder to install but huge difference, as long as you dont mind losing the stock bov sound. I wouldn't do coilovers if its a daily, or if you do, dont lower it too much, cars already low, just get a sperate strut/spring assembly when the suspensions due.

That's pretty much all mine has, and a tune+ a few goodies, and it shits on just about everything, especially baru vape faglords and truck fags.

Mines at 140000 miles still with original clutch too, if that doesn't speak to the reliability I dont know what else will. So /comfy/.

Ask away if you have any more questions please.

to be fast how? In a straight line? if the answer to that is yes you might as well just kill yourself.
fucking benchracers thinking they're engineers all of a sudden and because they buy a turbo kit off ebay to go fast in a straight line their car is fast. fuck off.
a car is fast if it's fast in the corners not in the straights, the straights are only a bonus.
if your car can go 300km/h in a straight line but can't take a tighter corner at more than 60km/h then your car is a piece of shit and you should drive it, along with yourself, off a bridge.

now, in regards to your question:
any bmw with a 2.5l engine (even with a >3l engine if americlap). great cars, agile, fairly fast, can be made faster with supporting mods and a good tune.
any old subaru
any old lexus
nissan 350z
basically either AWD or RWD, if you're gonna get a FWD piece of shit then go for a golf or some shit and mode that fucker to hell.

Listen to this guy I you think your college budget will support paying ~$1000 every month or two to keep your pseduoeliteist Deutsch wagon on the road

Also wanted to say this, MS3 is the perfect fast DD

Have one with 145.000km and its running at 310hp for 40.000km now and the thing i had to change were the front wheel bearings because they started to make noise

Interior also looks pretty good for its class

Buy a 5k civic and get a monster turbo for the other 3k.

get a mazda speed6. AWD and faster than the speed3.

E92 328i. You can get them around that price now, they're reliable (literally never had any issues with mine), 0-60 in 6.0, very comfy, and good handling.

Sweet man! Thanks for showing me this!

literally this

Most of the ones in this price range have a fuckload of miles though or are salvaged

How many miles would you say is a safe amount for a Mustang GT 2006 Premium? (Before they get rediculous with maintenance)

Get a civic for 3k and keep it stock. Any money you spend modding a shitbox would be better spent on a better car from the start.

I cant find one of these anywhere though, cargurus, autotrader, even craigslist! (Looking for the older ones of course, as thats what im told is what you want)

All the civics you find are gonna be beat to shit by ricers. A 3k car is worth just that, and you'll get just that out of it.

"AWD"

Anything over 100k and it's going to start to have minor and then major issues. The engines aren't really too bad it's everything else you have to worry about.

Ws6 trans am is the only answer. will assrape any other similarly priced car in a drag race and doesn't handle too bad either

Post your local Craigslist.